


Halloween

by lickmymccracken



Category: My Chemical Romance, The Used
Genre: Drug Use, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-30
Updated: 2012-10-30
Packaged: 2017-12-03 22:31:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/703351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lickmymccracken/pseuds/lickmymccracken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gerard doesn't know what he was looking for when he drove up to the beaten up house, trembling with the bass of the music blaring inside, but he as soon as he steps foot on the pavement, he knows there'll be no turning back.</p><p>Maybe he'll learn next year.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Halloween

Halloween was always the worst for you. Everything was a memory, fresh in your mind like a fire that had only just been extinguished. Your brain smarts and burns with each memory that occurs to you; the simplest thing sparking a new forest fire within the confines of your skull.  You look around at the broken down house that had been covered with stupid decorations just last year and the memories in your mind burn like embers. It’s almost as painful as real fire, you think, as you stop your car across the street, turning off the ignition and ejecting the CD from the radio. You’ve learned to do that after the car refused to eject your favorite Radiohead CD a few months ago. You turn your attention back to the house. The music playing inside the house isn’t too loud, something you’re thankful for; it will make it easier to talk.

 

As you pull on the handle of the driver’s side door, you’re struck with a thought. Is that what you came for? What is it that you’re actually looking for? Closure, maybe? A, what is it, fifth “second chance”? Another fresh wound? The possibilities of a sloppy one night stand, maybe. You yourself can’t find the answer in your mind, but still you climb out of the beat up old car, making it creak and groan, and walk up to the front of the house with the gravel crunching under your shoes at full volume.

 

There is a group of people out on the porch of the house; smoking, drinking, laughing, talking. Thankfully, no one notices you. Or, at least you don’t notice anyone noticing you. You don’t see him, but a man with tattoos points you out to the girl he’s been talking to, and whispers something to her with a slow shake of his head. If you had noticed, he would have caught your glance and pulled you aside, attempted to tal you out of your delusion of what may happen in there. But, you don’t notice him, and you reach the front door. You tap the wood with a shaking hand and before your knuckles can touch the door for a third time, the door is swung open and…

 

There he is. The source of all of your anguish, your nightmares, fantasies, late night sobs into your pillow, begging, pleading for another chance even though you know that’s not what you want. It’s definitely not what you need, and nowhere near what you deserve. His dark hair still falls in the unruly ringlets around his shoulders that you remember, and there’s a headband atop his head with black and pink leopard print cat ears stuck to it. You want to laugh, but you force your eyes away from them and down his head to where his topaz blue eyes are rimmed with charcoal black. Your urge to laugh at him changes to a urge to kiss him. There’s whiskers painted on his face in the same charcoal, and a pink leopard print bow tie hanging loosely from a stretched out elastic band around his neck. The rest of him is dressed normally, and you thank whatever higher power for his aversion to jeans and shirts that aren’t black or white. You try desperately to look at his face and smile, but instead your eyes are caught looking between that stupid bow tie and the ears.

 

What you haven’t taken the time to notice though, is how the house has gone almost completely silent. Nor, have you noticed the expression on his face that is somewhere between half-smiling amusement and angry fear. The biggest component you’ve neglected to see, though, is the blown out pupils enveloping those blue eyes, and the little dot of dried blood crusted to his forearm. You won’t notice that until much later though, until you’re too far gone. If you had noticed any of the aforementioned things, the night would have gone severely different than it did. Perhaps, if you hadn’t been in such a nervous state when coming to this house, you would have noticed it all. But, since you were a nervous wreck as you always were around him, or even when you thought of him, the night carried on the way it did, no matter what would have or could have happened.

 

“Wow!” He’s the first to break the ear-splitting silence. His voice is as shrill and attention-catching as always; rough like jagged rocks, with the smooth undertone that hooks you under your shirt collar and makes you melt. “Look who’s here guys!” There’s no sarcasm in his voice, none that you can notice at least. He turns excitedly to the rest of his house guests, pulling you into the home with one arm before draping it over your shoulders. Your memories smart again as you flash back to all the times he had done this in the past, despite the obvious height difference between the two of you. In your skull, you remember how much you had loved that quirkiness about him, one of his most amazing traits in your eyes. Someone in the house replies from a dark corner, “The faggot decided to join us!” You think you recognize the voice, but not enough to put a face and name to it. He quickly snaps back, telling whomever the voice belongs to to fuck themselves, “He is our GUEST!” he informs the house, and you are promptly hauled off to a couch where too many unfamiliar faces are squished together. He brings you down into a seat that should only be big enough for one of you, but somehow expands once your bodies connect with it. There, you’re stuck for another ten minutes while the party resumes from it’s momentarily lapse and he chats away happily with other people, keeping your hand in a vice grip the entire time. He gets passed drink after drink, downing half then passing it on to someone else. People come to sit by him, talking on and on about topics you aren’t paying attention to enough to understand. He only to brings you into the conversation after someone has asked about you, to which he replies, “Oh, this is Gerard, we haven’t seen each other in over two years.” Then go back to chittering about God know what.

 

After an additional fifteen minutes of sitting there, caught in limbo, you can’t take it anymore. You’ve been simmering, getting closer and closer to boiling over, and you finally jerk his hand back and hiss to him, “Bert, can we talk somewhere…? Privately.”  You don’t know when he got it, but there’s a sucker stuck in his mouth and you can smell the sickly sweet cherry scent coming off his breath when he leans in close to you and whispers, “Upstairs,” then hoists the two of you off the sofa.

 

He takes the stairs two at a time, gripping desperately at the hand rail to keep from tumbling backwards. You follow closely behind, feeling your stomach start to twist itself into knots already. At the top of the stairs he turns to the right and goes into a room leaving the door open for you to follow. “Bert,” You start once the door is shut and you’re facing him, but he’s gravitating towards you. His small arms snake around your torso and he nuzzles his face into your chest. He mumbles something you can’t hear and you’re left standing there with your arms awkwardly out at your sides as he sways against you, humming and mumbling little nothings into your shirt. It’s now, when he looks up with a smile that’s so far gone, it might as well be in outer space, that you notice his pupils and he pulls away just as your opening your mouth to say something that you haven’t decided on yet.

 

He moves over to sit on the side of his bed, the bed you used to share with him, and pulls open his bedside table. Yours used to be on the other side of the bed, but as you look over there, it’s gone. When your eyes pull back to him, he’s got a small plastic bag, needle and syringe, a metal spoon and a lighter sitting on the wooden top of the table. You stand frozen in place as he sets it all up; dropping two little rocks into the spoon and letting them melt with the water from the glass that sat on the night stand. You take on or two steps as he pulls the solution into the syringe and taps it with his finger. All the while he’s been talking, not necessarily to you, just babbling about something you couldn’t head over your ragged breathing. He’s not talking now, though, as he ties off his arm with the elastic of the stupid bow tie, his pink tongue peeking out of his mouth as he feels around for a vein. You drop to your knees in front of him as he finally pushed the needle into his skin, barely an inch from the spot where the dried blood is still stuck to his arm.

 

He pushes down the plunger and his eyes roll back into his skull almost immediately. Your memories have gone full blown forest fire inside your head. He smiles so big it looks unnatural, as if someone had taken a knife to his face and split his cheeks into a Cheshire smile. The cherry sucker falls from his mouth onto the carpet as he pulls the needle from his skin with shaking hands. His blue eyes are almost completely engulfed by gigantic black pupils as he looks at you and falls forward to lean his forehead against yours. His breath is still too sweet with cherry and it’s so perfect for him; too sweet, too strong, too much for even him to handle.

“I love you, Gee.” He whispers into the quiet. You reply: “I love you too, Bert.” And you both lean in for a soft peck. Your stomach is lurching and churning as you do. You feel disgusting; like an abomination. You did this to him; you know that in your heart. You know you shouldn’t have left. You knew it then and you know it now. “I’m sorry,” You say, as if it’s any consolation. “Isokay, Gee.”  He slurs, “I love you.” He finishes as he’s crawling off the bed to sit in your lap. You let him. “Please... Don’t—” You start to say, but can’t finish. He lets out a small noise and nuzzles closer to you. “Don’ do what, baby?” Your heart tightens with a pet name. A stake drives right through it. Your brain is burning hotter than the sun.

 

“Don’t love me.” You want to say, but it never comes out. How many times had you wanted to tell him that? How many night had you laid awake, rousing him softly and opening your mouth to say it, but retracting yourself and telling him to go back to bed. You wonder if any of this would be happening if you had just said it the first day your love began to die, cold and bitter, inside your chest. The day your brain started to catch fire.

 

His breathing starts so slow, regulate from the hiccupping breaths he took before. You crane your head down to look at him. “Bert?” You ask, but his eyes are drooped closed and his mouth falls slightly slack. “Bert, don’t—” You start, but he shakes his head against your chest.  “Don’t leave me.” He mumbles, as you’re starting to stand up, pulling his sleep heavy body with you. “Don’t leave me, Gee.” He says slowly, trying to escape the grips of sleep as you lay him on the side of the bed that used to be yours. You try to ignore the memories of the bed as you pull the blanket over his body and plant a small kiss on his forehead before he mumbles out a broken plea once more, “Pl… don…. Gee…. Don lea….”

 

You couldn’t have run out of that home any quicker.

***

Just as you’re about to leap off of the porch, a tattooed hand catches your arm; the man who had pointed you out before. You don’t know that he’s seen you, that he’s been thinking about you the entire time you’ve been in the house, wondering, pitying. You don’t have to look at him to know his face, you can tell from the letters inked into his fingers. Those memories don’t burn you; they’re a freezing cold shower. “You shouldn’t have come here.” He says to you, but his voice is forgiving, not hard, just like always. You rip your arm away from his grip, not a vice, but a baby soft grip, and run to your car, desperately wiping away salty tears as they stream down your face, irritating your skin.

 

You won’t come back again, you promise yourself. You will keep your distance. Try and forget.

 

Until next year.


End file.
